Plekhanov, Who Knows Not What He Wants

Published:RabochyNo. 4, May 25, 1914.

      Published according to the text inRabochy.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 20,

      pages309-312.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Joe FinebergTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Plekhanov,as we know, has often found himself in an
awkward fix on questions of tactics and organisation. During the past
eleven years (since the autumn of 1903, when he went over from the
Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks) he has repeatedly and comically made a muddle
of these questions.

Heis beginning to get muddled again, a sad circumstance we feel
obliged to acquaint our readers with. But first of all, we will recall the
great service that Plekhanov rendered during the difficult years
(1909–11). He praised the “underground” and staunchly supported the
Party decisions on combating liquidationism. He exposed the, opportunism of
the liquidators and their revival of Economism (a bourgeois trend in
Marxism in 1894–1902). He showed that, by repudiating the “underground”,
the liquidators were betraying the Party. He quite rightly explained that
“Mr. Potresov” was a Judas, and that the apostles were strongerwithoutJudas thanwithhim.

Thesewere clear, definite and integral ideas, fully in keeping with
the decisions of 1908 and 1910.

Butlook at Plekhanov’s newvolte-face. In the newspaperYedinstvo[1]he now denounces the Pravdists for their
“factionalism” and “usurpation”, and asserts that we have “not one
working-class press but two”.

Thisis not very literate, but the meaning is clear. A liquidationist
newspaper is declared a working-class newspaper! Fancy that! And yet this
selfsame Plekhanov had argued that the resolution declaring liquidationism
to be a manifestation ofbourgeois influence on the proletariatwas a correct one.

Itis useless for Plekhanov to try to forget this. The workers will
only ridicule such forgetfulness.

Theliquidationist press isnot aworkers’ press, but one that
serves as a vehicle ofbourgeois influence on the
proletariat. This has been definitely and clearly stated in the
decision of the “entire Marxist
body”,[2]and the liquidators are to this day strikingly corroborating
it (see, for example, the concordant remarks of Bulkin and Martovagainstthe “underground” inNasha Zarya, 1914, No. 3).

Whatis the meaning of Plekhanov’s appeals for unity with the
liquidators?  Unity with the group of publicists who repudiate the
“underground” in true Potresov style? To advocate such unity one mustadvocate repudiation of the“underground”!

Plekhanovhas got into such a muddle that he does not know where he
stands.

Theliquidators have made it abundantly clear inNasha Zarya,
inNovaya Rabochaya Gazeta(run by F. D. and L. M.) and through
the agency of Chkheidze and Co., that theystand their ground,
i. e., they defend Potresov and tolerate abuse of the “underground”. They
defend the idea of a legal workers’ party.

ButPlekhanov condemns liquidationism as a crime against the Party
while at the same time advocating “unity” with the liquidators.

Wecan only smile at this.

ThePravdists warmly welcome all workers who really want to recognise
the “form” which Potresov rejects; as for the empty phrases about
“unity” with the opponents of the “underground”, they regard them as
empty phrases from people who know not what they want.

ThePravdists calmly meet the charge of being “usurpers” by saying:
Does not one who is fond of declaiming, who is fond of phrases and dreads
thefacts, resemble a usurper and impostor? Plekhanov lives
abroad; why is he so modestly reticent about the fact that from August 1912
to May 1914 the liquidators havenotpublished asingle
issueof their newspaper abroad?Neitherhave they published
asinglefactual reference to “organisations” which Plekhanov
too has defended.

Theopponents of the liquidators, however, have published a number offactualreferences toalllocalities in Russia,in a
numberof issues.

Plekhanovsays nothing about these facts, because the facts refute his
phrases.

Takethe openly verifiable data published in Russia. During two full
years, 1912 and 1913, the Pravdistsunited(and proved this by
group collections)2,801workers’ groups; the liquidators united750. If we add 1914, from February 1 to May 6 (preliminary
estimate), we shall have5,302as against1,382.

ThePravdists have a majority of aboutfour-fifths!

Naturally,the only thing that people whodreadthe facts can
do is to keep on uttering phrases.

Aroundthe precise and clear decisions, thrice supplemented and
verified by the representatives of the workers (in January 1912 and in
February and the summer of 1913), the Pravdistsunitedfour-fifths
of the class-conscious workers in Russia. These decisions have been
amplified in hundreds of articles and have been put into effect.

Nowthese are not phrases, not fables, not anecdotes about goitres and
savages (Plekhanov is still retailing old jokes!) butfacts. This
isreal unity, unity of theworkers, who have testedtheirtactics by experience.

Toslightingly call these tactics “Leninist”—tactics which have
been approved by thousands of workers—is only a compliment to Lenin, but
it does not do away with the5,000workers’ groups, with their
unity, or with their Party.

Thecatchwords “factionalism”, “fragmentation”, “disintegration”,
and so forth, apply to Plekhanov and his present-day friends. Look at the
list of contributors to the intellectualist Narodnik journalSovremennik, published on page 1 of Plekhanov’sYedinstvo. Here we have Himmer and Co. who preachanti-Marxistideas. Plekhanov was right when he described them as
the ideas of “socialist-reactionaries”. Here we have the
god-builders and Machists: Bogdanov, Bazarov and Lunacharsky. Here we have
the liquidators: Dan, Martov and Cherevanin (for some reason Potresov,
mentioned in No. 66 ofSevernaya Rabochaya Gazeta, is missing from
the list). Here also we have the liberal Bogucharsky, and so forth.

Andin thisSovremennik, which lacks the faintest trace of
anything working-class, Mr. Himmer openly boasts thatPlekhanov is in favour of unity with him!But Plekhanov is silent.

Isit not time to doff the mask, before the workers tear it off,
perhaps rudely!  Among intellectualistanti-Marxistcircles, among
the flotsam of bourgeois democracy—this is where poor Plekhanov has
accidentally landed. This is where you will find chaos, disintegration and
tiny factions, which are opposing the unity achieved in the course of two
years by thousands of workers’ groups of the Pravdist trend.

Weare sorry for Plekhanov. Considering the struggle he waged against
the opportunists, Narodniks, Machists and liquidators, he deserves a better
fate. We shall, however, continue to build up the unity of the workers’
groups—already built to the extent of four-fifths—which pursue definite
tactics tested by experience.

Weshall accept anybody and everybody who renounces liquidationism; the
door is not locked.

Withthe example of Trotsky’sBorbaand Plekhanov’sYedinstvobefore our eyes, we shall show the deplorable and
ridiculous vacillations of the intellectualist grouplets which, cut off
from the working-class movement, keep on vacillating, swing to one side one
day and to the other side the next, from the weak-kneed intellectual
Potresov to the weak kneed intellectual Himmer.

Thisis a sad spectacle, but one that is inevitable in a
petty-bourgeois country in the epoch of bourgeois-democratic
transformations.

[1]Yedinstvo(Unity)—a legal newspaper published by a
group of pro-Party Mensheviks headed by Plekhanov and Bolshevik
conciliators in St. Petersburg from May to June 1914. Four issues appeared.

[2]Leninis referring to the resolution “Liquidationism and the Group of
Liquidators” adopted by the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the
R.S.D.L.P. in January 1912. The resolution was drafted by Lenin. (See
present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 480–81.)